Read Online Passage by Caroline Overington - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Caroline Overington
Tags: australia
Ads: Link
familiar with the narrative that has formed around me: Victoria’s new deputy premier, Paul Bannerman, entered the cult of the Jesus People when he was seventeen years old, emerging some years later without an explanation.
Brother Ruhamah’s name has featured prominently in that narrative.
Many of those articles – and it’s difficult not to conclude that this wasn’t the intention of the newspapers that published them – have been presented in a way that suggests my so-called ‘Lost Years’ (a term, I might point out, I came up with myself) are something I’ve tried to hide, and that my association with Brother Ruhamah is something I’ve tried to erase from my personal history.
I’ve come here today to assure the Victorian people that this is not so. My past – meaning my time with the Jesus People – has long been the subject not only of discussion, but also – occasionally – of much mirth in my own home, with my wife, with my children and with my mother and her partner Gary (my parents are divorced).
There is nothing about those years that the Premier doesn’t know.
That said, I accept that some people may have questions: why did I join the Jesus People, and what did I do while I was there?
There is curiosity about Brother Ruhamah. I heard the reporter on 60 Minutes on Sunday say he hasn’t been seen in public for more than twenty years and the only photograph of him is apparently the grainy one that appeared on the front of Saturday’s Age .
What does he look like? Moreover, what kind of cult does he have?
I am prepared to answer these and any other questions in detail, and to that end I am grateful to the staff of the Victorian College of the Arts, for making this venue available at such short notice, so that I might give this address.
The first time I saw Brother Ruhamah – and this was more than thirty years ago – he looked a bit like a puppet. The top half of his body was inside an industrial waste bin in that loading bay I’ve just mentioned, and his legs were dangling free.
At first I thought: Uh-oh, somebody’s caught in the bin – maybe they’ve been smothered in there. But then the legs kicked and the body dropped to the ground, and there was Brother Ruhamah, dusting his coat with one hand. In his other hand, he had two apples.
I had no idea who he was, of course, and certainly I had no sense of being in the presence of ‘greatness’. My wife, Ruth, once asked me, ‘But surely, given whathe’s been able to do – gather up all those people – there must have been something special about him? Was he tremendously charismatic, with glowing skin and gleaming eyes, or perhaps it was something he said?’
If only that were true! The truth is, he looked like nothing so much as a backpacker who’d been on the road too long. He was nut-brown, and lean and wiry, like he lived on lentils. He had heavy-soled rubber sandals on his feet, and his toes were hairy, with dirty nails. He wore a brown tunic as long as a dress and it had slits up either side. His hair was short, although not as short as that of some of the Hari Krishnas I used to see on campus. He had a long beard, with no moustache. That look is more common now – some people in our Middle Eastern communities wear their beards that way – but at Melbourne University in 1977, it was something different.
If I had to say how old he was back then, I’d have said he was ‘ancient, at least forty’ – but then everyone over the age of twenty-five seemed ancient to me.
As for his first words: he said, ‘Hello’ and I said, ‘Hi’ and then he asked me, ‘Are you hungry?’
I wasn’t hungry and especially not for the apples he was holding.
‘You think they’re rotten because they’ve come from the dumpster,’ he said, clocking my expression. ‘You’ve got no idea how much good food people throw out. It’s an insult to those who are starving.’
I’m not sure how I responded to that. Probably I was
Brother Ruhamah’s name has featured prominently in that narrative.
Many of those articles – and it’s difficult not to conclude that this wasn’t the intention of the newspapers that published them – have been presented in a way that suggests my so-called ‘Lost Years’ (a term, I might point out, I came up with myself) are something I’ve tried to hide, and that my association with Brother Ruhamah is something I’ve tried to erase from my personal history.
I’ve come here today to assure the Victorian people that this is not so. My past – meaning my time with the Jesus People – has long been the subject not only of discussion, but also – occasionally – of much mirth in my own home, with my wife, with my children and with my mother and her partner Gary (my parents are divorced).
There is nothing about those years that the Premier doesn’t know.
That said, I accept that some people may have questions: why did I join the Jesus People, and what did I do while I was there?
There is curiosity about Brother Ruhamah. I heard the reporter on 60 Minutes on Sunday say he hasn’t been seen in public for more than twenty years and the only photograph of him is apparently the grainy one that appeared on the front of Saturday’s Age .
What does he look like? Moreover, what kind of cult does he have?
I am prepared to answer these and any other questions in detail, and to that end I am grateful to the staff of the Victorian College of the Arts, for making this venue available at such short notice, so that I might give this address.
The first time I saw Brother Ruhamah – and this was more than thirty years ago – he looked a bit like a puppet. The top half of his body was inside an industrial waste bin in that loading bay I’ve just mentioned, and his legs were dangling free.
At first I thought: Uh-oh, somebody’s caught in the bin – maybe they’ve been smothered in there. But then the legs kicked and the body dropped to the ground, and there was Brother Ruhamah, dusting his coat with one hand. In his other hand, he had two apples.
I had no idea who he was, of course, and certainly I had no sense of being in the presence of ‘greatness’. My wife, Ruth, once asked me, ‘But surely, given whathe’s been able to do – gather up all those people – there must have been something special about him? Was he tremendously charismatic, with glowing skin and gleaming eyes, or perhaps it was something he said?’
If only that were true! The truth is, he looked like nothing so much as a backpacker who’d been on the road too long. He was nut-brown, and lean and wiry, like he lived on lentils. He had heavy-soled rubber sandals on his feet, and his toes were hairy, with dirty nails. He wore a brown tunic as long as a dress and it had slits up either side. His hair was short, although not as short as that of some of the Hari Krishnas I used to see on campus. He had a long beard, with no moustache. That look is more common now – some people in our Middle Eastern communities wear their beards that way – but at Melbourne University in 1977, it was something different.
If I had to say how old he was back then, I’d have said he was ‘ancient, at least forty’ – but then everyone over the age of twenty-five seemed ancient to me.
As for his first words: he said, ‘Hello’ and I said, ‘Hi’ and then he asked me, ‘Are you hungry?’
I wasn’t hungry and especially not for the apples he was holding.
‘You think they’re rotten because they’ve come from the dumpster,’ he said, clocking my expression. ‘You’ve got no idea how much good food people throw out. It’s an insult to those who are starving.’
I’m not sure how I responded to that. Probably I was
Similar Books
